


Yesterday's Rose

by Zdenka



Category: Nußknacker und Mausekönig | Nutcracker and the Mouse King - E. T. A. Hoffmann
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marie finds she cannot bear to give up her enchanted kingdom quite yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday's Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LillyRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillyRose/gifts).



> I am following the ballet in the one detail of having Marie be twelve years old, rather than seven as in Hoffmann. She is therefore fourteen at the time this story begins.
> 
> Warnings: Underage marriage; story is somewhat darker in tone than the original, but consistent with E.T.A. Hoffmann's other stories.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, Greenlily.
> 
>  _Ah! Je veux vivre  
>  Dans le rêve que m’enivre  
> Ce jour encor!  
> . . . .  
> Loin de l’hiver morose,  
> Laisse moi sommeiller,  
> Et respirer la rose  
> Avant de l’effeuiller._
> 
> Ah! I want to live  
> in the dream which intoxicates me  
> just for today!  
> . . . .  
> Far from the gloomy winter,  
> let me sleep,  
> and (let me) breathe in the rose  
> before plucking its petals.
> 
> -Charles Gounod, _Roméo et Juliette_
> 
> . . . the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should return to embrace the living.  
>  "Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume.  
> -Victor Hugo, _Les Misérables_ (trans. Isabel F. Hapgood)
> 
> And when a year and a day had come and gone, they say he came and fetched her away in a golden coach, drawn by silver horses.  
> -E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”

The Queen stood in the castle gardens, beside the silver lake, and watched the swans gliding back and forth across the clear water. Some of the swans came hopefully to the shore, since she often fed them cakes and marzipan, but this time her hands were empty.

The King found her there and hastened to her side. “What troubles you, my dear Queen?”

She started when he spoke, for her thoughts were far away, but she immediately smiled to see him. “It is nothing, my dear husband. Only –“

“Will you not tell me?” he asked anxiously. “For you seem lost in thought and are not even paying attention to the swans you love so much.”

“It seems so foolish, I did not want to tell you! But I will, since you ask it. It is only that I had a strange dream.”

“What was your dream?” the King asked with concern. For he loved his wife tenderly, although they were both quite young.

The Queen played with the ribbons of her dress. “I dreamed that I was lying in a bed in a strange place. I felt very sleepy, so that I did not want to move. My sister Luise was there with a bunch of roses and lilies. There was a man who looked like a doctor, and he said to her, ‘I am very sorry, but we still cannot discover the reason why your sister has remained so long asleep.’ Luise put the flowers in a vase near my bed and sat down beside me. She stroked my hair back from my face and said, “Poor child! It has already been a year that you have been lying here, and the doctors cannot help you.’ And I was still so sleepy that I did not even want to open my eyes. But then I saw that she was weeping and I wanted to ask her what was wrong. I tried to call out to her, but I could not speak or move my hand. And then I awoke in my own bed in the castle.”

The King paled while she spoke and looked very troubled. “Alas, my Queen. I am not certain what your dream means, but I fear it.”

“Do not fear,” the Queen said with a smile, and took his hand. “I truly think it is nothing.”

“Perhaps so,” said the King, “but I would like to consult Mr. Drosselmeier none the less. And now, will you come inside? Dinner is ready. The cooks have prepared an especially wonderful dinner tonight.”

The Queen clapped her hands in delight. “Yes, let us go in!”

  


Marie was sitting pensively on a footstool when her godfather entered the room. "How are you today, Marie? What makes you so deep in thought?"

"Good morning, Godfather Drosselmeier!" Marie said, rising to greet him. "I was only thinking about the wonderful kingdom of candy, and how I would like to see it again."

Her godfather frowned. "Are you still going on about that?" he demanded.

"I like your nephew, Mr. Joseph Esaias Drosselmeier, very much even when he is not the King of Toys," Marie explained earnestly. "But I thought I would like to see all the candy people again, and the darling swans. I asked him if he could take me there to visit, but he said he could not. If it would be all right, would you let the two of us go there tomorrow, just for a visit?"

Drosselmeier had opened his bag and was examining his tools. “What can you be talking about, Marie?”

“But surely you remember the battle with the mice?” Marie pleaded. “And how the Nutcracker won back his kingdom?”

“Nonsense,” said her godfather roughly. "And now be off with you. I have to fix the mechanism of this clock, and I can't work with you distracting me."

Marie was sorry that her godfather was evidently in a poor humor, but she did not hold it against him. Before she fell asleep that night, she said to herself quietly, “Still, it would be marvelous to see Marzipan Castle again, and talk to all the funny people, and make chocolate with the princesses. I do wish I could go back there!”

  


The King sent for Drosselmeier, who was the Court Wizard and Clockmaker, and within a short time he appeared.

“Good day, nephew,” he said with a bow. “Good day, my charming Marie.”

The King looked very grave. “Uncle,” he said, “my dear Queen has had a dream which disturbs me greatly, and I would like you to say what you think of it.”

“Certainly, if you wish,” said Drosselmeier, and sat down on a bench, tucking his coattails beneath him. At the King's request, Marie recounted her dream.

Drosselmeier listened in untroubled silence. When Marie finished, the King looked at him anxiously. “Well, uncle?” he said.

“What of it?” Drosselmeier returned. “Her Royal Majesty wished to be here, and here she is.”

The King did not answer but glared angrily at Drosselmeier. The Queen said in a troubled tone, “My father and mother must be very worried about me.”

“And so they are,” Drosselmeier answered. “Though I have advised them not to worry, since you are not sick or hurt in any way; they believe you are in a deep sleep and cannot wake up.”

The Queen's eyes filled with tears. “I am sure I never meant to cause them such distress,” she said. “Is there any way for me to reassure them? I am sure you must know a way, dear godfather.”

The King frowned darkly at his uncle. “You are very hard-hearted,” he said, “to leave her family in ignorance all this time.” He turned to his Queen. “Of course you must go back to visit them, my dear, and tell them that you are quite well.”

“I would like to,” said the Queen, very distressed, “but if I go back to see my family, will I ever be able to return here?”

“That does not matter,” the King declared nobly. “You must think first of consoling your family's grief.” But the Queen wept and would not be comforted, and she swore she would not go unless there was a way to return to him, for she could not live without him.

“There must be a way, dear godfather! Please tell me how to do it!”

“Certainly,” said her godfather, for he was very obliging and never liked to see his dear Marie in tears. “You, Your Majesty, must pluck a rose from a brier in this garden and give it to your Queen. As long as she keeps it with her, she will be able to return here to your side.”

“But will you not come with me?” Marie asked the King in surprise.

He reluctantly shook his head. “I would gladly accompany you to your family home or wherever you wish, my dear Queen. But I cannot leave my subjects, who depend on me.” The Queen was very sorry to be parted from him, but she understood the justice of this reply.

The King looked at his uncle for a long moment, then stooped to pick a beautiful red rose and presented it to the Queen, who was drying her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. Drosselmeier gave an odd smile that neither of them saw. “Only, Marie,” her godfather warned her, “ you must be certain to keep the rose with you, or you will not be able to return. That is the way the spell works, and it cannot be changed.” Marie earnestly promised she would cherish the precious rose and keep it safe. But what if, she thought then, someone brought her a whole bouquet of roses, how would she know which was the right one? To make certain, she pulled a silk ribbon from her gown and tied it around the stem of the rose.

  


Luise smoothed the covers gently over her sister. She lay very still, only her chest rising and falling slightly with her breathing. “Wake up, Marie,” she whispered, though she knew it was useless. Still, she could not bear the silence of the sickroom, and so she began to talk of whatever came into her head, the doings of her mama and papa and their brother Fritz and even their dear little dog. “Only we miss you terribly, Marie. The doctors say they cannot tell what is wrong, but I hope that someday you will open your eyes and speak to us.” She sat for a time by the girl's bedside, but at last she rose and put the fresh flowers she had brought into the vase, taking away the ones that were dry and withered. Just as she finished, in came her godfather Drosselmeier. “Good morning, sir,” she said politely. “Have you come to see poor Marie?” Somehow she did not quite like it when Judge Drosselmeier visited Marie, though of course that was nonsense. In addition to being a most respectable man, he was very fond of the child and would never harm her. It was only that he said such queer things sometimes – once, she remembered, she expressed the hope that Marie would get well and be able to come home again, and their godfather replied, “Perhaps she is just as well where she is.” Which certainly seemed an odd thing for him to say -- to someone who did not know what you and I know, dear reader.

“Indeed I have,” Drosselmeier replied. He glanced at the flowers she had brought. “I see you have brought lilies and roses to adorn her sickroom. Marie will like that.”

“They were always her favorite,” Luise replied softly. “Though I have no hope that she will see these flowers before they fade.”

“Just between the two of us, my dear Miss Stalhbaum, I should not be at all surprised if our little Marie were to awaken soon.”

“May God grant it so,” said Luise, though she feared it was not likely.

  


Although the King saw the Queen off cheerfully, he was grieved at heart, for he had a premonition that something would occur to separate them. As the days and weeks passed and Marie did not return, the King became more and more uneasy. “Alas,” he sighed. “Can she have forgotten me?” But he knew his Queen’s loving heart too well to suspect her of any treachery. He said to himself, “Some accident must surely have delayed her.”

Not only her royal mate but the kingdom itself soon felt the absence of its queen. Little by little, the bright and cheerful aspect of the city faded away. The environs of the castle became less pleasant, as the trees grew darker and taller, pressing closer to the walls. To comfort his troubled mind, the King often walked up and down in his Queen’s favorite spot in the castle gardens, a charming spot beside the lake. Yet the change which had come over the land reached there too. The once-pristine flagstones became covered with moss and slime. The clear rippling water grew cloudy and choked with melancholy water weeds of twisting form. The very swans that used to disport themselves so gaily in the lake seemed uneasy and often raised their necks from feeding to look behind them.

One day the King visited the lake and with horror discovered a cloud of blood staining the surface of the water, together with clumps of white feathers. The dark surface of the lake was perfectly still. The other swans were huddled together in a knot. They beat their wings and hissed when he approached.

“Dear swans,” said the King with tears in his eyes, “you have been faithful to me through good fortune and ill. But now I can no longer protect you. You must not stay any longer in a place that has become filled with danger for you.” At these words, each of the swans glided up to him and permitted him to remove its golden collar. The smallest and gentlest of the swans lingered a moment under his hand. Then they beat their great white wings and sought the breezes that would bear them aloft. They circled three times, all together, and flew away towards the south.

The King stood watching until the last trace of them had vanished in the distance.

  


Marie awoke in her bed. Her first thought was to sit up and run to tell her family the good news, but to her surprise, she found her limbs were weak and would not hold her. “How peculiar,” she said to herself. “I am like one of my own dolls, and I must stay here until someone comes to move me.” She was comforted, however, by seeing a vase of her favorite flowers nearby, among which was the rose from the castle garden. She recognized it by the ribbon tied around its stem. Marie was too sleepy to be frightened at her strange lassitude, and so she waited patiently for someone to enter the room. After a time which Marie did not count, her mother entered the room, shutting the door after her. She seemed sorrowful and dejected, but when she saw Marie’s eyes open, she cried out in surprise and rushed to her daughter’s side. Marie stretched her hand out toward her mother, who alternately kissed her daughter and praised Heaven. Marie’s father hastened into the room as well, fearing some catastrophe; but when they saw she was truly awake, there was laughter and joyful tears. They immediately sent for Marie’s sister Luise and her brother Fritz, so they too could share in the general happiness. When they were a little calmer, Marie’s father explained to her that she had been so long asleep that her body had forgotten how to walk and do other things; but with the help of good doctors, she would eventually be back on her feet. Marie was dazed by everything that had happened, but when she became overwhelmed, she looked at the vase of flowers and the enchanted rose that she knew would take her back to the wonderful castle whenever she desired.

A few days later, Marie awoke in warm contentment. As she had every day, she looked for the beautiful arrangement of flowers, and especially the crimson rose with her ribbon tied around it. To her horror, her particular rose was gone. She burst into tears and could not stop weeping. Her sister Luise ran into the room. “Marie, what is the matter? Does something hurt you?”

Marie managed to sob out, “The rose – my rose is gone.”

“They were wilting, my dear, and I took them away and brought fresh ones. See, these roses are every bit as lovely!” But Marie wept and would not be comforted. Her family attributed it to the effects of her recent illness.

Later that day, however, her godfather Drosselmeier stopped by to visit “his little Marie,” as he called her, and she told him of the terrible thing that had happened. “My poor dear Joseph – will I ever see him again?” And tears trickled down her cheeks.

Drosselmeier shook his head. “I told you to be most careful with that rose, Marie, and this is what has happened. But I will do my best to fix the matter; in a year and a day, I will go back to the castle and ask my nephew if he wishes to return here as well.”

At that, Marie took heart and wiped her eyes. “Cannot you make it any sooner, dear godfather Drosselmeier?” she asked in a choked voice.

“That is the way it works,” said her godfather, “and it cannot be changed.” Marie was perforce compelled to be content.

  


The King walked through the streets of the capital, sadly musing on the changes to his kingdom. The once cheerful and bustling streets were almost deserted; citizens who had to leave their homes for some errand went about quickly and furtively, wrapped in coats and shawls of dull colors, not meeting each other’s eyes. The fountains in the marketplace, which once spouted fresh lemonade and other refreshing drinks, were surrounded by weeds and only gave forth a trickle of cloudy water. The king scooped up the water with his cupped hand and tasted a little of it on his tongue, but to his disappointment it was salt as tears and he could not drink it.

The stones of Marzipan Castle, once pinkish-white and garlanded with flowers, now shone sickly pale. The turrets twisted in grotesque and fantastical shapes, and their domes ended oddly as if melted by fire. The guards on duty, whose coats were once so bright and smart with polished buttons, looked ragged and dusty, but the King greeted their salutes with a grave nod. He knew the poor soldiers were doing their best.

The throne room, at least, was still warm and well-kept. The four princesses, the King’s sisters, waited for him there. He was most grateful for this piece of his dear Queen’s fancy; he had never had sisters before, and it was charming to have their companionship. “Good morning, dear ladies!” he greeted them. “I trust you find yourselves well?”

Princess Stella and Princess Giulietta did not reply. Princess Stella had grown pale and wan of late, her face and hands like porcelain and a hectic flush in her cheeks; she sat in her chair smiling and no longer spoke. Princess Giulietta had found a beautiful diamond ring in her jewelry box and spent all her time admiring it. Princess Antonia had unfortunately lost her voice, but she smiled warmly and nodded her head in a friendly manner. Princess Olympia tilted her head and replied very sweetly, “Yes, yes.” She was not much of a conversationalist, but the King knew she meant well.

At that juncture, the elder Drosselmeier entered the throne room, for it had been a year and a day since Marie departed. “Well, nephew,” he said. He glanced about him. “Your royal sisters seem to be winding down. Would you like me to adjust their mechanisms? I can take them apart and put them back together just as they were.”

The King stood and glared at his uncle. “Leave them be,” he said. “I know too well what you consider an improvement. Your imagination is not nearly as pleasant as my dear Queen’s.”

Drosselmeier was not put out by this reproach, but merely asked, “Do you wish to leave, or will you stay in your kingdom for another year, Your Majesty?”

The King sighed deeply. “I have just received a letter,” he said, “from my friend and kinsman Prince Fakardin, who writes that his land is threatened by a monster raven.” (Drosselmeier smiled mockingly at this intelligence.) “What would I do if that raven came here? I can no longer protect my kingdom and its people, and therefore I will leave.”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Drosselmeier replied. “Take my hand and we will go.” And in a very short time, he had led his young nephew back to Nuremberg.

  


Marie was very glad to see young Joseph Esaias Drosselmeier again, and he often visited the Stahlbaum house. She was sorry, however, that she could not speak of her time in the enchanted kingdom to anyone. Her parents and sister at first dismissed it as lingering effects of her illness, but when she persisted, she found they became distressed. Fritz, I am sorry to say, only rolled his eyes and muttered “Nonsense.” Marie had a kindly heart and did not wish to cause anyone worry, so she no longer spoke of it to them. Even her dear Joseph, when she tried to speak to him of their former time in the castle, would say with an unhappy expression, “My dear Marie, it pains me to speak of it.”

She told her troubles to her godfather, as she often did, and now he was the only one to whom she could speak of the faraway kingdom where she had ruled as Queen. “Must I forget it too?” she asked with tears in her eyes.

“I think that is best,” said her godfather. Nevertheless, Marie found she could not give up that wonderful kingdom entirely and still visited it from time to time in dreams until, as the years passed, the details faded in her memory. She was left with a vague recollection of joy and wonder that she had once felt somewhere long ago. Even so, her experience left its impression on her character, making her at the same time stronger and more compassionate, and proved a hidden source of comfort through the sorrows of the years to come.


End file.
